One woman’s Journey

Dear Womans Place UK

I’m Patricia, female specimen of the human species and identificated as woman in the human world. I mean, I’m just a human female but I “live woman” more than I am one. My inner self doesn’t even have a name let alone a sex. I may not have the intellectual baggage a lot of my socialist feminist sisters have but I have enough to understand humans live on different levels depending on different axis of oppression affect their lives and how able or enabled they are to struggle against them. I cannot know this and simply say I’m woman. I live woman is more accurate at this level and on this level it’s not that different than living under a black identification.

I’m also a member of the Labour Party, following its change of stance re austerity.

I only woke up to the, then unimaginable, prospect of the seeing a minority’s rights being pit against women’s rights this December. Since then I’ve been avidly reading everything I can get my hands on and I’m increasingly worried.

To add to the glaring examples of violence against women speaking out (one of which managed to shut down a much beloved annual book fair), I’ve now read too many stories of how our younger lesbian sisters are finding themselves increasingly sidelined and silenced even in their own communities, of younger women (such as a friend’s daughter) trying to escape the misogyny of this world by transitioning. It’s hard not be worried.

I feel too green to to broach all of these subjects with confidence but I have enough confidence to speak out as I can.

I have a son. Before he was two we had to flee his father. The way society works my son and I were the ones to have been uprooted. My son and I were the ones to have had to leave everything behind. And my son and I are the ones living with the consequences of abuse of which a form of persistent depression I suffer from is one. I cannot imagine what it might have been like for us if we hadn’t been able to seek refuge with Women’s Aid then. Bruised and traumatised I also don’t know what it may have been like to have found a man in that house. It’s how traumatised I was.

For the 8 months I was there, it was beneficial for me not to have to deal with any men. This abuse-related phobia of men lasted a bit longer but I’m fairly okay now.

I recently had a row with a friend. She cried in disbelief as I extolled on the great spanner in the gender works that allowing men and women to self-ID as the opposite sex could represent. Oh how naive I have been for so long. I’m afraid to say, it was only then that I got it. Get it I did though.

What I have since then found about the claims made by trans ideologues is that they could set us back decades if not centuries. Female brains. Aaaargh!

It’s not just self-ID. It’s mental health for girls struggling as they discover their personalities in a misogynous world.

It’s healthcare professionals being pressured by policy into indulging young persons’ self-mutilation instead of helping them navigate the troubled waters of sexism.

I can’t speak on gender dysphoria per se but it strikes me as problematic that a one-size-fits-all solution to people who try to sail against sexist currents problem is being pushed even as each person pushes against them in different ways.

I’m delighted to have now started a standing order to help you send our message anywhere and everywhere. It’s not much but it will increase if the Labour Party fails to get its act together and listen to women in seriousness, in good faith and with all women in mind.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you are doing. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get people in my area to help organise a meeting.